The 6 best corporate April Fool’s Day pranks of 2019

It’s 2019, and we’re living in a world where ‘news’ is regularly deemed to be fake and an alarming number of people refuse to vaccinate their children against deadly diseases due to a study that has been found several times over to be invalid. Many of us are convinced that the world is flat, and we care more about proving that Michelle Obama is a man and Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard than putting an end to global warming. A large orange man-child remains the leader of the free world, which kind of makes every day a joke – but April 1st has hit again, and for some reason, we still act like it’s ‘the one day of the year’ to make up jokes and pranks.

Critique aside, some organisations have put a lot of thought into the pranks they’ve leaked into the media, and we’re really appreciating their creativity. Here are six of our favourite corporate April Fool’s Day pranks of 2019:

Oh, what a pickle

This image will haunt my dreams for years to come; McDonald’s announced yesterday they were releasing a burger containing only, well, pickles (and a bun). I know there’s a growing community of pickle-worshippers who may have actually been upset to discover this atrocity was never going to reach their taste-buds. But where I’m from, a pickle on your burger means you need to pull over in your car once you’re out of the drive-thru to peel it off your burger before you can ingest it. It’s about as edible as those toxic, “do not eat” packets of preservatives that come in new shoe boxes. For this reason, I was super happy to learn this was a prank.

The NSW police hire new CAT-dets

We’re well acquainted with the NSW police, also known as the actual meme lords of the southern hemisphere. We’d have been really cut if they didn’t participate in April Fool’s Day, and we were not disappointed.

It’s a scary world out there; it may be 2019 but women are afraid (for good reasons) to walk alone at night and cybercrime is on the rise. Luckily, the purr-fect officers on patrol at every police station in NSW are on the prowl.

The police in Tasmania also joined in the fun by promoting a new siren designed to be more noticeable than the current system. In this video, the police officer talks about the need for a more distinct sound to increase road safety – and what did they come up with? Baby Shark played on bagpipes – what else?

Tinder cares about inches

Tinder knows its lady users desire only two things in a man: honesty, and height. Sadly, the two don’t always combine; Tinder released a statement yesterday claiming, “it’s come to our attention that most of you 5’10ers out there are actually 5’6. The charade must stop.”

In response to this, Tinder has pitched a height verification badge. All a man needs to do to ‘verify’ his height is take a photograph of himself in front of a commercial building. The ratios will be crunched, and Tinder will either confirm or deny each man’s alleged height, to prevent ‘height-fishing’, and the badge will be attached to his profile for all potential swipers to see.

It’s written in the stars

GoGet released a statement claiming that Leos (born between July 23 and August 22) are the worst drivers, statistically, and are thus suspended from their service owing to dangerous roadside behaviour and a higher tendency to break the law whilst driving than any other zodiac. The most unbelievable part of this prank is that Libras are supposed to be the best drivers on the road. I bet this campaign was designed by a Virgo.

Recolonisation

In an attempt to make light of the Brexit situation that has everyone in the UK crying tea instead of tears, Webjet has sneakily advertised $1 international flights from all major UK cities to Australia to escape the Brexit madness (and rain). Seriously, mass-European settlement on this continent is so 1700s – but we appreciate the free leg-up to our tourism industry, nonetheless.

Eurovision has spoken

Brexit humour strikes again – this time it was Eurovision who jumped in on the fun, claiming that if Britain leaves the European Union, they won’t be allowed to compete in Eurovision. The article was written by Flora Olip (an anagram of ‘April Fool’s’). Luckily for die-hard fans of the competition, Eurovision isn’t actually affiliated with the EU (seriously, even Australia competes!), so we can definitely expect to see the UK perform this year.

So that’s it for our roundup of 2019’s leading corporate April Fool’s Day pranks! Did we miss your favourite? Let us know in the comments below!